Advances in Couple Therapy Stem from Combining Affective Neuroscience with the Science

Exciting Developments in the Practice of Marriage & Couples Therapy

By Robin T. Neal, LMFT and Jim Gill, LMFT

At the 2008 Nevola Symposium, Jim Gill, LMFT and Robin T. Neal, LMFT described exciting new developments in the practice of marriage and couples therapy stemming from the links between neuroscience, relationship studies and spirituality. Brent Atkinson’s application of affective neuroscience to the science of intimate relationships, generated from longitudinal studies conducted by John Gottman and The Gottman Institute, and the recent plethora of work demonstrating that mindfulness, meditation and prayer practices have the power to interrupt automatic brain processes are transforming the way we practice marriage and couples therapy.

The Gottman Institute studies have pinpointed key interpersonal habits that distinguish people who succeed in their relationships from people who fail (Gottman, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2006). Advances in neuroscience offer insights into two fundamental questions that have stumped marriage and couples therapists for eons: 1. Why do partners keep doing things they know won’t help their relationships? 2. Why do partners have such a hard time doing the things they know will make things better (Atkinson, 2005)? The link between neuroscience and spirituality offers specific proven skills that, when practiced regularly, empower people to override their automatic tendencies and function with new intention (Siegel, 2007)

Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified seven distinct neural networks in the human brain that have executive operating capabilities when activated (in Atkinson, 2005). He has identified two self-protect neural network and five neural network that promote human connection. Each neural network operates by the law of associative memory, what fires together wires together. Each neural network contains specific emotions, thoughts, perceptions, memories and action tendencies that have established a relationship with each other and therefore tend to operate together. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux (1996) concluded that emotions rather than thoughts function as the primary organizer of the brain. Therefore, when a specific emotional state is experienced, it sets in motion a series of chemical reactions that activate the operation of a distinct neural network (in Atkinson, 2005). When any of the seven executive operating systems is in charge of the brain’s command center, then the feelings, thoughts, perceptions, memories and action tendencies wired in that neural network are the ones that are most easily accessible.

What does Affective Neuroscience tell us about human functioning and change?

• Humans are creatures of habit.
• These habitual ways of being in the world are demonstrated by the predictable patterned ways in which an individual tends to respond to similar circumstances.
• Pre-established neural connections are forged when repeated past stimulus-response experiences are wired together.
• The brain does not know the difference between what it is experiencing and what it remembers because the same neural networks are activated.
• Once activated the pre-established neural associations operate automatically.
• Pre-established patterns will operate unless interrupted by conscious intention.
• Humans have the capacity to re-wire their brains when they repeatedly interrupt their automatic pre-established response patterns and establish new neural connections by consciously generating new thoughts, attitudes, and actions when a specific emotional state is experienced.
• Conscious awareness of a formed habit occurs when a person is able to observe their habitual pattern by bringing it into the pre-frontal cortex part of the brain (this seems to be in the same location as the third or inner eye.)
• It is this part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, that permits an individual to exercise choice and interrupt automatic pre-established processes.

How does the information generated by the field of affective neuroscience inform and influence the practice of marriage and couples therapy?

• People function in distinctly different ways depending upon which neural network is activated and in command.
• Humans are susceptible to influence and have a capacity to imitate because we are endowed with mirror neurons (monkey see, monkey do principle.) Emotional states tend to be “contagious” because humans have mirror neurons.
• We each have the ability to exert influence on the emotional state of our partner by being aware of (and consciously choosing) the emotional state we are in when we interact with our partner.
• Couple interactions will be dramatically different if one or both partners is in a protect mode.
• When a protect mode is activated, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories and action tendencies are all about protecting the self and fending off danger, the fight or flee instinct is active.
• A productive conversation cannot occur when either partner is in a protect mode.
• When a protect mode is activated, a person needs to know that the perceived danger or threat is understood, at least to some degree, and that working toward restoring a sense of safety is the priority.
• A person needs to learn skills to calm down and self-sooth and partners need to learn effective ways to reassure and sooth each other when protect modes are activated.
• Sometimes it is necessary to separate the partners for a time in order to interrupt a couple’s automatic reactive pattern, and then support each partner in developing new more effective responses when his/her partner goes into a protect mode.
• Learning to shift out of protect mode and practicing responses that will activate one of the “connect mode” neural networks that is more likely to elicit a more desirable response from partner (via the activation of mirror neurons) are two central goals of couples work.
• Mindfulness and meditation practices have been found to be effective in helping individuals develop the skills to calm, sooth and center themselves, deliberately focus their attention, and thereby interrupt pre-established neural connections.

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